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August 29, 2010
“How Ought Christians to Live?”
Luke 12: 13 – 21/Hebrews 13: 1 - 9
Sunday, August 29, 2010
It is now almost the very end of August. Many of us have finished vacations and have put off the lightened work loads of Summer. We have returned to our ordinary daily lives. For some of us that means increased work schedules. For others it means a return to certain social schedules and activities. But as we embark once again on what we consider our normal lives, I want us to take just a few minutes to make certain that our Normal Lives are Christian lives.
I assume that all of us here have faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. We all believe that He is the Son of God and that His Death and Resurrection paid for our sins and gave us eternal life. We believe that our Faith in Him is the channel through which his forgiveness and that eternal life has come to us. So as we stand or sit in this place of Worship, we are certain of our salvation into the next life, the eternal life.
But we are still living this life, right here in the bustling suburbs of West Lafayette. How should the assurance of God’s forgiveness and the promise of Eternal life change and affect our current lives? What would we describe as the or a Christian life? What qualities should it have? What should we be doing in and with this life for God as we wait for the days of our deaths and resurrections?
These are not a difficult things for a reader of the Bible to discover. God has written in his word several descriptions of what the Christian life should be like. Some of these dwell on specific characteristics, like the parable about greed that we find in our first lesson. Others contain lists of qualities or duties as does our second lesson from the 13th chapter of Hebrews. Now before we begin to look at this list, I want you to understand that there are other lists of qualities of the Christian life that give aspects not listed here, so this list is not all-inclusive.
Having established that, let’s take a look at what is listed here.
The first thing that is listed here is a little difficult to understand in our New Revised Standard Version. In it we read “Let mutual love continue”. That sounds a little bit romantic. But before we go into the mutuality of being in love and the anguish of unrequited love, let’s see what another translation says. The NIV translation of verse 1 reads “Keep on loving each other as brothers”. That is a much better translation, not only because it gets us out of that romantic mutuality, but because it much more accurately reflects the Greek words that form the original verse.
There is a member of this congregation who gets upset when I say uncomplimentary things about the city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. So today I am going to say something complimentary about that great city. It has a beautiful name. Not only is it a beautiful name “Philadelphia”, it is a biblical name. There was in the days of the Apostles a city named Philadelphia in what is now Turkey. But the word Philadelphia is more than just the name of a city in the Bible. It was used to describe one of he qualities of the Christian life. The Greek word Philadelphia means Brotherly Love. The Quaker William Penn gave that name to the first city in his commonwealth because he wanted that Quaker and Christian Characteristic to be practiced there and to be a trademark of that city. And I must say, that at times it has been.
The Greek word Philadelphia is used in this first verse. According to the Greek wording the verse should be translated “Let brotherly love continue”. Philadelphia or brotherly love refers to the honor and dignity and respect and caring that all people, especially Christians should have for each other.
And contrary to the NRSV wording, Brotherly love does not have to be mutual. It should be, but the fact that my brother does not love me does not lessen my responsibility to love him. I am to respect him, and care for and about him.
Christians are to be those who are known to love their brothers and sisters in Christ. They are to care for and about other Christians. In the time and place in which this letter was written, welcoming visiting Christians into the homes of other Christians was important because commercial Inns were often places of doubtful repute.
Verse two is also not translated as well as it could be. In the Greek copies of the Epistle, there is a connection in the wording of verses 1 and 2. As I have already mentioned, verse 1 contains the word Philadelphia which means love for a brother. In verse 2 where the NRSV has the words Hospitality to strangers, the Greek has the word Philaxenia. You might be able to figure out the meaning of this word if I tell you that the word xenia occurs in our anglicized word xenophobia, which means fear of strangers or fear of people who are not like oneself.
So in the first verse the author exhorts Christians to love their Christian brothers and sisters and in the second verse he tells them to not neglect loving strangers. It seems that as the word Philaxenia became more commonly used, it often specified hosting and welcoming strangers. But I think that the intention of the verse is that we are to love, care for, welcome, and open our homes to our Christian Brothers and sisters as well as to those who are strangers to us.
Verse 3 adds others whom for whom Christians are to care. Those who are in prison and those who are being tortured. These categories obviously refer foremost to Christians who in those days and in our own time have been imprisoned because of their faith. My dear brother Leonard periodically sends me e-mails that inform about certain Christian pastors and other Christian leaders in China who have been arrested and tortured because they are Christian leaders. Other sources inform me of Christians in Muslim nations who are abducted, imprisoned, tortured, or worse. We need to keep those people in our hearts and minds and pray for them and speak out for them and do whatever we can to help them.
But in the light of what Jesus said about his coming to free those in prison, I do not think that the care for prisoners by Christians is limited to prisoners who are Christians or Christian leaders. We are to be concerned about and minister to prisoners of all types. Many have been won to Christ while they were in prison. There are 4 people I know of connected to this congregation who regularly visit prisons and prisoners. If you have the opportunity to visit or help a person in prison, remember the verses in the bible that instruct Christians to care for prisoners.
In verse 4 Christians are encouraged to honor marriage and to keep the marriage bed undefiled. This is a hot topic in our time because lifting up the biblical pattern of marriage would not include extending the title of marriage to same sex couples. Neither would it include the casual view of divorce that many in our time have. Christians are to value opposite sex marriages and to urge people to refrain from sexual behaviors that are only to be exercised within the bounds of marriage.
Verses 5&6 deal with the topic addressed by Jesus in our first lesson; Greed and the dependence on Material goods. We are not to be in love with money or possessions and we are to be generally content with what we have. We are to depend on God to help us and to provide for us.
There is a progression in verses 7,8&9. Christians are to remember those who spoke to them about Jesus. They are to imitate their lifestyles and continue to follow the doctrines they taught. Neither Christ nor proper doctrines change. New and strange teachings about Christ and or His Church are to be rejected. There are many of these in our time including the offshoot of inclusiveness that states that all religions are avenues to reach God. Jesus himself declared that He was the only way to the Father. Anyone who teaches otherwise is a deceiver.
In the time in which this letter was written, regulations and rituals involving food were substituted for or added to the proper doctrines of salvation. In our time the additions to and replacements for proper Christian doctrines are other things and ideas, but they are still not needed nor to be desired.
So, as we get back to our normal daily routines and lives, what should be a part of them? Love for Christian brothers and sisters. Love and welcome for strangers. A desire to help those who are imprisoned and tortured. A reverence for Marriage and a concern for proper sexual conduct, especially within ourselves. A dependence on God and a lack infatuation with money and possessions. And a reverence for our Christian leaders and the doctrines they taught us. All of these are to be a part of our daily lives as Christians.
Pastor David Horner
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, IN 47906
Posted by faithpres at 06:39 PM | Comments (0)
August 22, 2010
“He Who Knows and Sends”
Jeremiah 1: 1 - 10/Psalm 139/John 1: 43 - 51
Sunday, September 22, 2010
It is probably good that Jeremiah was a prophet sent to minister in Jerusalem in the 7th century BC. If he had been sent to our community in our time he would have had an issue with his name. The name Jeremiah means God Hurls. Probably not a good name to have near a University where hurl often does not mean to throw but to throw-up. We are not told that God specifically ordered Jeremiah’s parents to give him that name, but God must have had something to do with the selection of that name because it was to be Jeremiah’s mission to inform the people of Judea and Jerusalem that God was going to hurl or throw them out of their land because of their and their forefathers repeated unfaithfulness.
Some have referred to this passage as the calling of Jeremiah by God to be a prophet. I guess if you look at it from Jeremiah’s point of view it is. But if you look at it from God’s point of view, it is not. In verse 5 we read that God said to Jeremiah, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.” From God’s point of view, this passage does not tell us of Jeremiah being called to be a prophet. That determination or calling had been made by God long before Jeremiah was born. It was made even before God formed Jeremiah in his mother’s womb.
This and the passage from Psalms we read as our responsive reading has been quoted by people who have identified themselves as Pro-life to back their point of view. Now it must be admitted that in their original contexts neither of these passages have the subject of abortions in mind. But still, in these passages we have God identifying himself as the agent who creates or knits together babies in their mother’s wombs and intimately knows them before they are born. I think that should at least make us approach the subject of abortions with great caution and seriousness, a caution and seriousness that have not always been observed in the political and judicial decisions about this issue. Unfortunately they have not always been observed in the decisions of some church and denominational declarations on this subject.
But this sermon is not really about abortions, it is about the major subject of God’s speech to Jeremiah. God told Jeremiah that he had known him since before he was conceived and that he had in that long ago time appointed him to be and consecrated him to be a prophet.
You may have noticed that God in Jesus made a similar declaration to Nathanael. He greatly impressed Nathanael by telling him that he had seen him sitting under a specific tree before Phillip even told him about Jesus. Nathanael was so impressed that he declared Jesus to be the Son of God and the King of Israel.
Oddly enough, Jeremiah did not seem all that impressed when he was informed that God had known him before he was conceived and had way back then appointed him to be a prophet. His immediate response was to state that he could not do the job because he was only a boy and could not speak well. Jeremiah was more than a boy, he was a young man and perhaps he had not shown any talent for public speaking but I think there were other reasons for Jeremiah making excuses and attempting to refuse God’s orders.
We are told that Jeremiah was the son of a priest. He was probably also one or in training to be one. If you were the son of a priest, your vocation was set, you would be one too. And the prophets and the priests were often at odds, particularly during Jeremiah’s early days. In those days the priests were kind of running the temple and the religion on their own. The Book of the Jewish laws had been lost. So there was a lot going on in the temple and in the way the religion was practiced that was wrong. The prophets were often critical of the way the priests were running things, and so for Jeremiah the son of a priest to become a prophet felt like he was abandoning his family and his heritage and joining the opposing camp.
It is interesting to note that Jeremiah pleads his youth and inexperience as reasons why he should not become a prophet. We are told that the king who reigned in Jerusalem when God had this conversation was Josiah, who was then in the 13th year of his reign. Josiah was the boy king. He ascended the throne when he was 8 years old. In the 13th year of his reign he would have only been 21, not much more than a boy himself.
There were other possible reasons why Jeremiah would not want to be a prophet. But regardless of how many reasons Jeremiah had to refuse God’s appointment, God wasn’t buying it. God said “Do not say, ‘I am only a boy’; for you shall go to all to whom I send you, and you shall speak whatever I command you, do not be afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you.”
Then God touched Jeremiah;s mouth and said, “Now I have put my words in your mouth. See, today I appoint you over nations and over kingdoms, to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant.”
Jeremiah had said that because of his youth he did not know how to speak. So God put God’s words in his mouth.
I think I may have told you that the best preacher I know personally has a stuttering problem. He rarely stutters when he preaches but he occasionally does in other settings. But when he has God’s words in his mouth, he speaks clearly and with power.
I believe that it may be said of Christians living in our time that we have God’s word. We have it printed in books that most of us have in our homes. And as we read and even memorize the Bible, as we study it and learn it, it can also be said that we have it in our mouths. We are able to quote it and to tell people what it says.
Jeremiah’s duties related to the word of God he was given seem to be two fold. He is to have some authority over nations and regarding them, he is to Pluck up, and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant.” Much of Jeremiah’s work would involve dire forcasts regarding Judea’ immediate future. He many times would predict the judgment of God against Judah and Jerusalem. But he would also predict the destruction of the destroying nations, the return of the exiles to Jerusalem and the rebuilding and rehabilitation of Judea and Jerusalem.
Most of us who have read and studied the bible are also aware that as we know it and look at and know our world, there is a two-fold application of the Word of God to our world and ourselves. The first would be judgment. You cannot read the bible and look at our world and even our lives and not realize that God will judge us and our nations and our world for much that goes on. There are entire industries that violate the moral rules of God involving the proper use of sexual relations. There are governments and organizations that pervert justice. The rich and powerful still abuse and exploit the poor and miserable. And perhaps the greatest sin of our time is that the truth of God and the truths about God are hidden and obscured in our common everyday lives.
These things needed to be torn down in Jeremiah’s day and they still need to be torn down in our time. People still need to know that there is a God and that He is not pleased with much of the behaviors and attitudes of the people of this world. We need to speak of God’s displeasure and much deserved judgments.
But we also need to speak of his promises. The possibility of forgiveness and the hope of eternal life need to be proclaimed to the people of our time. There are many and there is much that needs to be built up by Godly people presenting the promises and love of God as they are revealed to us through His Scriptures.
So in a general and less specific way, Jeremiah’s calling from God has become a calling from God to each of us who proclaim to follow Christ.
God has known you before you were conceived. You were created to be a follower of Jesus. He has given you His words in the Bible. Our world and its people need to know of the judgments and the grace and love that are revealed there. Will you allow those judgments and that Grace to rule your life? Will you tell others of God’s judgments and grace and love and forgiveness? God knows you and he Knows that you can do it. Will you?
Pastor Horner
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, IN 47906
Posted by faithpres at 03:27 PM | Comments (0)
August 15, 2010
“Here We Go Again!”
Hebrews 11: 29 – 12: 2/Luke 7: 11 - 17
Sunday, August 15, 2010
This past Wednesday, a deacon and an elder were looking at the first draft of the bulletin for this Sunday. They were checking the Scripture passages that were printed in the bulletin, and I heard one say “Oh Yeah, Pastor is back and we are printing half of the New Testament is the second lesson.” I know some of the passages I select for our Worship Services are somewhat lengthy but I do try to keep them from being too long.
Actually, for the sake of brevity I did not print or read the entire passage I want us to look at this morning. The subject of this passage is people who demonstrated great faith. The passage begins with the rather well-known statements of the first 2 verses of chapter 11 of the Epistle to the Hebrews. There Paul writes “Now Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. Indeed, by faith our ancestors received approval.”
The rest of chapter 11 is devoted to reminders of various folks who demonstrated great faith in God. Those referred to are Abel, the murdered son of Adam, Enoch who walked with God without passing through death, Noah, Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, the parents of Moses and Moses himself. As our second reading began in verse 29 of chapter 11 we read about more people of great faith. Some are mentioned by name, others by the defining events of their lives.
Here we find a reference to the Israelites who came out of Egypt with Moses and crossed the Red Sea or sea of reeds on dry land. Next we find their children and grandchildren who 40 years later witnessed the falling of the walls of Jericho. In connection with the fall of Jericho we find the name of Rahab, previously a citizen of Jericho who sheltered Israel’s spies and embraced the God of Israel.
Then we find more people mentioned by name: Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, and Samuel.
The first 4 of these were Judges who ruled portions of Israel before the Kings, These were men of great faith whom God used to deliver parts of Israel from their enemies. When you read the stories of their lives, you will see that they also had their weak moments. They had occasions when their behaviors did not please God.
David was the greatest of the kings of Israel. He built Israel into a mighty nation by his acts of faith in God, but he also had his great failings.
Samuel is mentioned because he was a great prophet, appointing the first two kings of Israel but he is also mentioned as being one of the many prophets of Israel. Some of the deeds of faith accomplished by some of the prophets are mentioned here. The one who shut the mouths of Lions was Daniel. The ones who quenched raging fire were Daniel’s three companions, Shadrach, Mesach, and Abednego.
The women who received their dead by resurrection were The widow of Zerepath and the woman of Shunem. The son of the former was raised by Elijah and the son of the latter was raised by Elisha. In the generation just before the author of this epistle, other women had had their loved ones raised from the dead by Jesus. One of those accounts was our first reading this morning.
Some of you might be familiar with some of the successful TV preachers of our day and previous years. I find fault with a lot of them not because I compete with them, but because some of them preach a false or truncated gospel. Many of them preach some form of the prosperity gospel, the gospel of Success, whose primary thrust is that God loves us and wants us all to be materially prosperous and successful in our careers. This passage would up to this point seem to agree with those preachers because all of the aforementioned were blessed by God materially for their faithfulness.
But then in the middle of verse 35 our author begins to open other categories of believers. Let me read what our author says about them. “Others were tortured, refusing to accept release, in order to obtain a better resurrection. Other suffered mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned to death, they were sawn in two, they were killed by the sword; they went about in the skins of sheep and goats, destitute, persecuted, tormented – of whom the world was not worthy. They wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground.”
These folks are singled out for commendation as having great faith because they would not give up their faith in God to escape torture and persecution and poverty. The word that is used for torture here implies being stretched out on a rack and beaten to death. This happened to many Jews who suffered during the Maccabees’ rebellion against Antiochus Epiphanes about 200 BC. These exploits are not mentioned in our bible, but they are a part of the History of the Jews described in the books of the Maccabees. In II Macabees the tortures and deaths of a woman and her seven sons is described. They refused to abandon their God and their Hebrew ways, so they were killed.
Our author tells us that they refused to accept release in order to obtain a better resurrection. A resurrection better than and of a different kind than that of those who were brought back to life and given to their mothers. They were striving for an eternal resurrection.
It is interesting that one of the signs of faith given earlier was that the faithful escaped from the edge of the sword, now we find that one of the signs of the faithful is that they killed by the sword. Both can be a sign of godliness.
We who are prosperous and do not suffer for our faith need to be careful lest be look down on those fine Christians who are in our own time facing poverty and persecution because of their faith. We need to pray for them and support them in every way we can.
It is interesting to note how the blessing and sufferings worked out in the lives of those who have been alluded to in this passage. Jeremiah escaped the death sentence of King Jehoiakim, while his contemporary, the faithful prophet Uriah was killed by Jehoiakim. According to Jewish tradition, Jeremiah was later stoned to death by Jews in Egypt. In the New Testament, we see James the Apostle killed by Herod, and Peter being delivered from the same fate by an angel. According to Jewish Tradition, Isaiah was sawn in half with a wooden saw.
Several of the prophets wore animal skins; Elijah, Elisha, and Ezekiel, and in the New Testament, John the Baptist.
Then after holding up all these people who did great things because of their faith, our author wrote “Yet all these, though they were commended for their faith, did not receive what was promised, since God had provided something better so that they would not, apart from us, be made perfect.”
Now remember, he had already stated that some of those who suffered torture refused to be released because they were seeking a better resurrection than just being brought back to this life. The means to that resurrection was not achieved until Jesus died and rose from the dead. Those great people of faith who lived before Jesus did not receive all that they were hoping for until Jesus came. They will receive their resurrections with those of us who believe in and will be raised from death by the power of Jesus’ death and resurrection.
But the author of this epistle has gone through the entire 11th chapter giving his readers descriptions of great people of faith to make his point in the beginning of chapter 12. It is easy to spot because it begins with a Therefore. He wrote “Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us,”
I think he is referring to the people of great faith as witnesses in two senses. First of all they have witnessed or demonstrated to us what can be done if one has great faith. They have shown us what we can do if we act on our faith.
They are also witnesses in the sense that they are observing us. Now I do not think that this passage teaches that dead Christians observe what is going on down here. But I think we are to imagine them looking down, encouraging us to live as they lived, rooting us on in our race.
Ah, Yes, the race. What race? The race that we live with our lives before God. Our author likens the Christian life to a race because in order to compete in a race you must get rid of extra weight. In our case that is not physical weight, it is the sins that hold us back. We need to get rid of them and live our lives to please God.
The reason I am preaching on this passage today is that many of us are about to start a new lap in this race of our lives. School is starting soon. Some of us will be starting a new school year as teachers and professors and school nurses. Some of us will be starting to teach Sunday School for another year. Some of us will soon be starting college as students. Some of us will be going back to school as students.
Some of us are in other laps of the race of our lives; the recently retired and long retired laps. These bring their own challenges and pains and limitations.
Whatever lap you are in or soon to begin in the race of your life, run it well, taking as examples the great people of faith who lived lives honoring God. But don’t look to them or focus on them. Look to Jesus, the one who has given us our salvation and who does watch us from his throne in heaven. Do all to please Him in your work and in your rest and in your retirement, getting rid of things that keep you from doing your best, and striving to please Him in all things.
Pastor David Horner
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, IN 47906
Posted by faithpres at 06:38 PM | Comments (0)
August 01, 2010
“Who’s Death?”
Colossians 3: 1-17
Sunday, August 1, 2010
As we look at the communion table, we all know what is under the cover. Bread and Wine. And we all know what they represent. The body and blood of Jesus the Christ or the Death of Jesus. When we participate in this sacrament we are remembering and honoring the death of Jesus. We are also remembering and proclaiming that his death was for us. He died for our sins.
It is easy to think of his death in the way that theologians describe as the substitutionary atonement. In other words, that the death of Jesus paid the price or cancelled the punishment due us for our sins. For nearly 2,000 years those who call themselves Christians have understood that this was the Apostle Paul’s understanding of the effects of the death of Jesus.
But there is another aspect of the teaching of Paul about the effects of the death of Jesus that has unfortunately not been so clearly understood by Christians from his day to ours. That teaching is that not only are the punishments of our sins done away with by the death of Jesus, but so are the sins themselves.
In the first 3 verses of the third chapter of Colossians, Paul, inspired by the Spirit of God, wrote two things about those who have believed in Jesus that might seem strange to us if we really read or hear them and think about them.
In the first verse he wrote “So, if you have been raised with Christ,…”. And in the third verse he wrote, “…for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.”
According to Paul, it is not only the punishment for our sins that has been done away with, but also the sins themselves. It was not only Christ who died on the cross, but also the sinful lives of all who would believe in Him. Our old selves, our old sinful lives and lifestyles also perished on the cross.
We were raised as new beings with Christ as he rose from the dead. Our new life is with and in Christ and we are to set our minds and our life practices on the things that are important in the presence of God, where Jesus now is. In short, since we have been born again, we are to live the kind of life that will be lived by the saints in heaven. We are to treat people as we will treat others there and as we will be treated there. We are to direct our thoughts toward heavenly ways of thinking and behaving: loving others and forgiving others.
We should be living our lives here on earth trying to increase God’s kingdom, not our own.
It is at this point that we would probably be at a loss as to how to proceed. How does one live the redeemed, post-resurrection life, the life of heaven in this world that is still full of sin and sinners? I would not be able to tell you if Paul, inspired by the Spirit of God, had not given the Colossians and us some directions.
In verses 5-11 he tells us what we need to get rid of in our lives. Fornication (sexual sins and temptations) impurity, passion, (being driven by human, earthly passions) evil desire, greed, anger, wrath, malice, slander, abusive language, the telling of lies, and, racial, gender, and class prejudices.
Most of those are plainly addressed in our English translations and require no elaboration or explanation. But I would like to spend a few moments explaining the issue of racial and other prejudices.
Paul wrote that we are to clothe ourselves “with the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator. In that renewal there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all.
In the context of the Greco-Roman world in the first century, this was an amazing statement. Jews thought they were the only ones who were chosen by God and who truly mattered to God. The Greek cultured Romans thought they were the enlightened ones and looked down upon those who were not Greeks or Romans or who did not speak Greek. Those were called by them Barbarians. They were considered to be uncultured.
The Scythians were at the bottom level of the so-called barbarians. No one thought they were worth anything. In an interesting twist of historic fate, some 400 years later, many individuals of Scythian descent became quite numerous on the police force in Rome. Even then they were disrespected and parodied by the people. Kind of like the way the Philadelphia police force was ridiculed by Mack Sennett as the Keystone Cops in the teens and twentys.
All of these folks considered those on the other side of the divide to be less human than they were. Slaves were legally considered to be non-persons. They were given the status of a tool.
But for Christians all humans are to be considered to be fully human, equally created in God’s image.
Then, having instructed Christians as to what behaviors they needed to get rid of or to put to death, in verses 12-17 he enumerated for them some of the qualities of the new life they were to be living. This is the life of heaven to be lived as a sample on earth. The things that are to be a part of this new life include: compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, patience, forgiveness, and love. And over all we are to experience and be guided by the peace of Christ. It is to be the “Umpire” of our hearts, And we are to be Thankful to God in all things, singing Psalms, hymns and Spiritual songs to God.
Then Paul finished this section by writing in verse 17, And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him.” For the Christian, everything is to be done in the name of Jesus. In other words, if some action or word cannot bring honor to Jesus, if it is inconsistent with the words and ministry of Jesus, then it should not be said or done.
When you receive the bread and wine this morning, remember that they are symbols of the death Jesus the Christ died for you. And you should also think about how much of your old life you have put away or died for Him. Are you in all things living for Jesus? Or is there still plenty of death left in your life?
Pastor David Horner
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, IN 47906
Posted by faithpres at 01:54 PM | Comments (0)